With new condo sale records broken once again this year, Mississauga is once again in the spotlight of many who seek a good return on their real estate investment. According to a report by the Toronto Real Estate Board, Mississauga condos experienced a healthy 7.21% price increase from February 2011 to February 2012.

This is more than double of the 3.31% price increase found in Toronto, between February 2011 and February 2012. Not surprisingly, condos in the Mississauga area are considered more affordable with the average price at $241,900 as compared to Toronto; where prices on average hovered around the $320,000 mark.

In this blog post I hope to share some of my personal client experiences, and how investors; both local and distant are choosing Mississauga condos as their number one real estate investments in 2012.

I will start off with the local people who invest in Mississauga. By local I mean anyone from the GTA (Toronto, North York, Oakville, Hamilton and of course those already living in Mississauga). Most of these clients witnessed the start of the Mississauga condo boom which commenced roughly in 2004. They have seen one condo building being constructed after another, and over a period of less than 8 years the Mississauga skyline has evolved beyond their recognition. After hearing countless stories of friends and family, who bought property and seen it rise in price over a short period of time, it only made sense for many of the local investors to get involved. This could explain the sharp increase of 7.21% over a short time period of one year. In addition, they recognize Mississauga as a young city with plenty of real estate investment opportunities and room to grow.

Most of my local investing clients are word of mouth referrals. Once they contact me, I met with them in person, go over their specific needs and begin working on their file. Some of them are only interested in pre-construction condos and others prefer to go with resale condos. The majority of these clients are familiar with such aspects as local property taxes, condo maintenance fees and mortgage conditions. Interesting enough, Toronto downtown condos almost always get brought up during my face to face meetings with local investors and more often than not, my clients share similar views as myself, regarding investing in Toronto condos.

Once we decide on which condo would make the most sense from an investment perspective, I provide my local clients with the number breakdown of how much return on investment they should expect to make. From there we together make a decision which condo property would be the best investment for their needs.

International Investors

My clients who are overseas investors (From Dubai, India and different parts of the Middle East and Europe), have very similar stories on why they have decided to invest in Mississauga condos. Most of them, never heard of Mississauga prior to being interested in investing in real estate. However, they did hear of the ever so popular Toronto condo market and how many profited huge amounts of money in a very short period of time. Upon further investigation into the Toronto condo market, the overseas investors soon realize that these condos are by no means cheap. The second dilemma that they are faced with is the size of the condos that are in question. Toronto condos are known to be very compact and sometimes referred to as “shoe box” size. Both the price and the size of the Toronto condos, gets many of the overseas investors worried and thus they begin to seek alternative options. They soon discover the city of Mississauga, which is less than 20 Km away and offers one of the most prosperous condo markets in the country. After doing some basic research about Mississauga, they find that the city is clean, debt-free and still in the process of growing. This could also be a factor of why the 7.21% healthy increase has occurred in Mississauga as compared to Toronto. Seeing as how, foreign investors see it better fit to invest in Mississauga condos than Toronto condos.

Right now, I would say that half of my international investors are referrals and the other half found me over the internet. Given the vast distances between us, some of my international clients who purchased pre-construction condos through me, I have never met in person, but stayed in tight contact with them over the phone and via e-mail.

Conclusion

What does the condo real estate market look like for Mississauga in 2012? My predictions lead me to believe that we will continue to see the same 3-7% rise in condo prices that we have seen in the past decade. Both local and international investors see Mississauga as a great opportunity to capitalize. Any active real estate agent in Mississauga will agree that it is difficult to find good condo properties, that are reasonably priced and that do not sell within 10 days.